Morphophonology
Encyclopedia
Morphophonology is a branch of linguistics
which studies, in general, the interaction between morphological and phonetic processes. When a morpheme
is attached to a word, it can alter the phonetic environments of other morphemes in that word. Morphophonemics attempts to describe this process. A language's morphophonemic structure is generally described with a series of rules which, ideally, can describe every morphophonemic alternation
that takes place in the language.
For an example of a morphophonological alternation in English, take the plural suffix. Written as "-s" or "-es" but generally understood to have the underlying representation
/z/, the plural morpheme
alternates between [s], [z], and [əz], as in cats, dogs, and horses, respectively. The plural suffix "-s" can also appear to alter phonemes directly surrounding it. As an example, the word "leaf" [lif] takes its plural by alternating the [f] with a [v] and adding the plural suffix, this time written as "-es" but pronounced as [z]. The result is "leaves" [livz]. Other words like "knife," "fife," and "dwarf" also display this alternation. This may be because the last phoneme in these words is actually an archiphoneme /F/ which may be realised as [f] or [v] depending on the context, even though those phonemes usually contrast. The archiphoneme is unspecified for voice, according to the rule: /F/ -> [αvoice] / __ [αvoice]. Because the underlying representation of the English plural suffix is /z/, a voiced consonant, the archiphoneme /F/ is realised as the voiced allophone [v].
Another example would be the different pronunciations for the past tense marker "-ed". After a voiceless sound, "-ed" is generally realised as [t], as in walked, hoped, wished, and so on.
Inflected and agglutinating languages may have extremely complicated systems of morphophonemics. Examples of complex morphophonological systems include:
The term "morphophonemic analysis" has a now obscure origin. In the 1940s and 1950s, many phonologists worked with a theory in which (roughly) all neutralising rules were assumed to apply before all allophonic rules. This in effect divided the phonology
into two components: a neutralising component, whose units were called "morphophonemes," and a non-neutralizing component, which dealt with phonemes and allophones. This bifurcated-phonology theory is widely considered untenable today, but "morphophonemics" remains a useful term for characterising the study of neutralising phonological rules as they apply in paradigms.
When we conduct morphophonemic analysis, we seek to establish a connection between data and theory. The theory in question is that morphemes are stored in the lexicon
in an invariant phonemic form. They are then strung together by morphological and syntactic rules. Finally, they are converted to their surface forms by a sequence of (often neutralising) phonological rules, applied in a particular order. The purpose of morphophonemic analysis is to discover a set of underlying forms and ordered rules that is consistent with the data; and the payoff is that seemingly complex patterns are often reduced to simplicity.
Morphophonemic analysis may be contrasted with phonemic analysis. Phonemic analysis is a more limited form of phonological analysis that seeks only to discover the non-neutralising (allophonic) rules of the phonology
. In phonemic analysis, only the distribution and similarity of the phones is examined. Therefore, the data need not be grouped in paradigms, but need only comprise a sufficiently large and representative set of words.
Like phonemic analysis, morphophonemic analysis can be pursued with a systematic method.
It is almost always easier to do morphophonemic analysis with data that are already expressed as phonemes, so if this has not already been done, it is advisable first to reduce the data to phonemes.
The next step is to break up the forms into their component morphemes. A potential complication is that phonological alternations may obscure this division. In the hard cases, one must try more than one possibility for "placing the hyphens," ultimately selecting the choice that yields a working analysis. As the words are divided into morphemes, it is usually also possible to state and order the rules of morphology
that are active.
As with morpheme division, the problem of choosing the underlying representations often involves considering more than one hypothesis, with the final choice defended by its leading to a working analysis. The following strategy is often helpful. Suppose segment A alternates with segment B in the data. In such a case, the analyst should consider two possibilities:
Assuming that you have picked a particular direction for the rules (/A/=>[B], or /B/=>[A]) and are trying it out, the next step is to construct underlying representations. Here is a recommended procedure:
When you have a suitable set of hypothesized underlying forms, it is helpful to arrange them in a row, aligning their corresponding surface forms underneath them, as follows:
It is then a matter of coming up with a single rule system that will derive the bottom row from the top. If you get stuck doing this, you can try collecting the local environments for the sounds that change, as described above for phonemic analysis.
When you are deciding whether to set up underlying A and derive B from it, or vice versa, there is often a clue in the data to guide you, namely, a contextually limited contrast. In the present case, note that while vowel length is phonemic in Chimwiini, only short vowels are allowed when more than three syllables from the end of a phrase
, or when a long vowel follows. Such limitations are a strong clue that there must be a rule that wipes out the contrast in these environments.
Another way of saying the same thing is: don't analyze in a direction opposite to that of a neutralisation. When we analyze Chimwiini with shortening, or analysis fits in well with the contextually neutralised distribution of long and short vowels in the language. If, however, we try to analyse Chimwiini with lengthening, the phonological distribution will stymie us. The following quadruplet of forms should make this point clear.
[x-kuːl-a] 'to extract' [x-kul-oːw-a] 'to be extracted'
[x-kul-a] 'to grow' [x-kul-oːw-a] 'to be grown'
The top row of forms shows an alternation between [uː] and [u], which we earlier analyzed assuming underlying /uː/ and the neutralising rule of Pre-Long Shortening. It is plain that Pre-Long Shortening is neutralizing, since the passive form of [x-ku:l-a], [x-kul-oːw-a], is identical to the passive of [x-kul-a], meaning 'to grow'. If we had wrongly chosen underlying /u/ for the root meaning 'extract', we would be defeated: no matter what lengthening rule we tried, it would be unable to derive [x-kuːl-a] for 'extract' and [x-kul-a] for 'grow', since these two forms would have the same underlying representation
.
The Isolation Form Shortcut
This strategy particularly suggests itself for languages like English
, where stems frequently appear alone. Hearing an alternation like [ˈplænt] ~ [ˈplænɪŋ] (plant ~ planting; we are tempted to take the evidence of the isolation form [ˈplænt] as evidence sufficient in and of itself to justify the underlying form /ˈplænt/. This turns out to work fine for this particular case.
However, the Isolation Form Shortcut does not work in general. The reason for this lies in how the system is set up, and simple logic: it is certainly possible that neutralisation rules could apply just in case no affix is added to the stem. We would say that in such cases, the affix
"protects" the stem from the neutralizing rule, serving as a kind of buffer.
To make this more precise: neutralising phonological rules are often conditioned by word edge; that is, they have environments like /___]word. When an affix
is present, a stem will be buffered by the affix
, and the crucial rule won't apply. Indeed, the rule will apply in only those members of the paradigm where there is no affix
, so that the buffering effect is absent.
Phonologies that have this kind of phenomenon are quite common, occurring in Korean
, Japanese
, English
, German
, Russian
, and many other languages.
Observe that Apocope
, when it exposes a consonant cluster at the end of a word, thereby makes it possible for Cluster reduction
to apply. The following abbreviated derivation shows this:
This is said to be a case of feeding: Apocope
"feeds" Cluster reduction
. The term is defined in general as follows:
Rule A feeds rule B when:
– A is ordered before B, and
– A creates novel configurations to which B may apply.
Consider next the interaction of /w/ Epenthesis
and Vowel Deletion, shown in the following abbreviated derivation:
It is clear that if /w/ Epenthesis
had not applied, then Vowel Deletion would have had an additional chance to apply, creating *[papiɻ]. Thus, we might say that /w/ Epenthesis
, in this particular derivation, "blocks" or "pre-empts" Vowel Deletion. The standard term used, however, is bleeding; /w/ Epenthesis
bleeds Vowel Deletion. More generally:
Rule A bleeds rule B when:
– A is ordered before B, and
– A removes configurations to which B could otherwise have applied.
To some extent English orthography reflects the etymology
of its words, and as such it is partially morphophonemic. This explains not only cats /s/ and dogs /z/, but also science /saɪ/ vs. unconscious /ʃ/, prejudice /prɛ/ vs. prequel /priː/, chased /t/ vs. loaded /ɪd/, sign /saɪn/ signature /sɪɡn/, nation /neɪ/ vs. nationalism /næ/, and special /spɛ/ vs. species /spiː/, etc.
Most morphophonemic orthographies, however, reflect only active morphology, like cats vs. dogs, or chased vs. loaded. Turkish
and German
both have broadly phonemic writing systems, but while German is morphophonemic, transcribing the "underlying" phonemes, Turkish is purely phonemic, transcribing surface phonemes only (at least traditionally; this appears to be changing). For example, Turkish has two words, /et/ 'meat' and /et/ 'to do', which in isolation appear to be homonyms. However, when a vowel follows, the roots diverge: /eti/ 'his meat', but /edir/ 'he does'. In Turkish when a root that ends in a /d/ appears without a following vowel, the /d/ becomes /t/ (final obstruent devoicing
), and that is reflected in the spelling: et, et, eti, edir.
German has a similar relationship between /t/ and /d/. The words for 'bath' and 'advice' are /bat/ and /rat/, but the verbal forms are /badən/ 'to bathe' and /ratən/ 'to advise'. However, they are spelled Bad, baden and Rat, raten as if the consonants didn't change at all. Indeed, a speaker may perceive that the final consonant in Bad is different from the final consonant of Rat because the inflections differ, even though they are pronounced the same. A morphophonemic orthography such as this has the advantage of maintaining the orthographic shape of the root regardless of the inflection
, which aids in recognition while reading.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet
, pipes (| |) are often used to indicate a morphophonemic rather than phonemic representation. Another common convention is double slashes (// //), iconically implying that the transcription is 'more phonemic than simply phonemic'. Other conventions sometimes seen are double pipes (|| ||) and curly brackets ({ }).
Another example of a morphophonemic orthography is modern hangul
, and even more so the obsolete North Korean Chosŏn-ŏ sinch'ŏlchabŏp orthography.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
which studies, in general, the interaction between morphological and phonetic processes. When a morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
is attached to a word, it can alter the phonetic environments of other morphemes in that word. Morphophonemics attempts to describe this process. A language's morphophonemic structure is generally described with a series of rules which, ideally, can describe every morphophonemic alternation
Alternation (linguistics)
In linguistics, an alternation is the phenomenon of a phoneme or morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization. Each of the various realizations is called an alternant...
that takes place in the language.
For an example of a morphophonological alternation in English, take the plural suffix. Written as "-s" or "-es" but generally understood to have the underlying representation
Underlying representation
In some models of phonology as well as morphophonology, the underlying representation or underlying form of a word or morpheme is the abstract form the word or morpheme is postulated to have before any phonological rules have applied to it. If more rules apply to the same form, they can apply...
/z/, the plural morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
alternates between [s], [z], and [əz], as in cats, dogs, and horses, respectively. The plural suffix "-s" can also appear to alter phonemes directly surrounding it. As an example, the word "leaf" [lif] takes its plural by alternating the [f] with a [v] and adding the plural suffix, this time written as "-es" but pronounced as [z]. The result is "leaves" [livz]. Other words like "knife," "fife," and "dwarf" also display this alternation. This may be because the last phoneme in these words is actually an archiphoneme /F/ which may be realised as [f] or [v] depending on the context, even though those phonemes usually contrast. The archiphoneme is unspecified for voice, according to the rule: /F/ -> [αvoice] / __ [αvoice]. Because the underlying representation of the English plural suffix is /z/, a voiced consonant, the archiphoneme /F/ is realised as the voiced allophone [v].
Another example would be the different pronunciations for the past tense marker "-ed". After a voiceless sound, "-ed" is generally realised as [t], as in walked, hoped, wished, and so on.
Inflected and agglutinating languages may have extremely complicated systems of morphophonemics. Examples of complex morphophonological systems include:
- Consonant gradationConsonant gradationConsonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various "grades". It is found in some Uralic languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Northern Sámi, and the Samoyed language Nganasan. In addition, it has been reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, the parent...
, found in some Uralic languagesUralic languagesThe Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
such as FinnishFinnish languageFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, EstonianEstonian languageEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
, Northern SámiNorthern SamiNorthern or North Sami is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. The speaking area of Northern Sami covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland...
, and NganasanNganasan languageNganasan language is a language of the Nganasan people...
. - Vowel harmonyVowel harmonyVowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
, which occurs in varying degrees in languages all around the world, notably Turkic languagesTurkic languagesThe Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
. - SandhiSandhiSandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words...
, the phenomena behind the English examples of plural and past tense above, is found in virtually all languages to some degree. Even Mandarin, which is sometimes said to display no morphologyMorphology (linguistics)In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
, nonetheless displays tone sandhiTone sandhiTone sandhi is a feature of tonal languages in which the tones assigned to individual words vary based on the pronunciation of the words that surround them in a phrase or sentence. It is a type of sandhi, or fusional change, from the Sanskrit word for "joining".-Languages with tone sandhi:Not all...
, a morphophonemic alternation. - Ablaut found in English and other Germanic languagesGermanic languagesThe Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
. Ablaut is the phenomena wherein stem vowels change form depending on context, as in English sing, sang, sung, song.
Morphophonemic Analysis
Morphophonemic Analysis designates the analytic procedures whereby paradigms with phonological alternations are reduced to underlying representations and phonological rules.The term "morphophonemic analysis" has a now obscure origin. In the 1940s and 1950s, many phonologists worked with a theory in which (roughly) all neutralising rules were assumed to apply before all allophonic rules. This in effect divided the phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
into two components: a neutralising component, whose units were called "morphophonemes," and a non-neutralizing component, which dealt with phonemes and allophones. This bifurcated-phonology theory is widely considered untenable today, but "morphophonemics" remains a useful term for characterising the study of neutralising phonological rules as they apply in paradigms.
- A Method for Morphophonemic Analysis
When we conduct morphophonemic analysis, we seek to establish a connection between data and theory. The theory in question is that morphemes are stored in the lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
in an invariant phonemic form. They are then strung together by morphological and syntactic rules. Finally, they are converted to their surface forms by a sequence of (often neutralising) phonological rules, applied in a particular order. The purpose of morphophonemic analysis is to discover a set of underlying forms and ordered rules that is consistent with the data; and the payoff is that seemingly complex patterns are often reduced to simplicity.
Morphophonemic analysis may be contrasted with phonemic analysis. Phonemic analysis is a more limited form of phonological analysis that seeks only to discover the non-neutralising (allophonic) rules of the phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. In phonemic analysis, only the distribution and similarity of the phones is examined. Therefore, the data need not be grouped in paradigms, but need only comprise a sufficiently large and representative set of words.
Like phonemic analysis, morphophonemic analysis can be pursued with a systematic method.
- Procedure for Morphophonemic Analysis
- Examine the data, consulting the glosses, and make a provisional division of the forms into morphemes.
- Find each morphemeMorphemeIn linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
that alternates, and locate all of its allomorphs. - Within each allomorphAllomorphIn linguistics, an allomorph is a variant form of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a unit of meaning can vary in sound without changing meaning. The term allomorph explains the comprehension of phonological variations for specific morphemes....
, locate the particular segment or segments that alternate. - Considering the logical possibilities, set up the underlying representations so that all the allomorphs of each morphemeMorphemeIn linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
can be derived from a single underlying representationUnderlying representationIn some models of phonology as well as morphophonology, the underlying representation or underlying form of a word or morpheme is the abstract form the word or morpheme is postulated to have before any phonological rules have applied to it. If more rules apply to the same form, they can apply...
by general phonological rules.
- This overall scheme is elaborated step by step below.
- Pre-processing the data: phonemicization
It is almost always easier to do morphophonemic analysis with data that are already expressed as phonemes, so if this has not already been done, it is advisable first to reduce the data to phonemes.
- Morpheme division
The next step is to break up the forms into their component morphemes. A potential complication is that phonological alternations may obscure this division. In the hard cases, one must try more than one possibility for "placing the hyphens," ultimately selecting the choice that yields a working analysis. As the words are divided into morphemes, it is usually also possible to state and order the rules of morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
that are active.
- Setting up underlying representations
As with morpheme division, the problem of choosing the underlying representations often involves considering more than one hypothesis, with the final choice defended by its leading to a working analysis. The following strategy is often helpful. Suppose segment A alternates with segment B in the data. In such a case, the analyst should consider two possibilities:
- Segments showing A ~ B alternation are underlyingly /A/, which is converted to [B] in certain contexts by one or more phonological rules.
- Segments showing A ~ B alternation are underlyingly /B/, which is converted to [A] in certain contexts by one or more phonological rules.
- In other words, always consider both directions.
- To give a concrete example: if we were analysing Chimwiini, we would find many instances of long vowels alternating with short as in
- [x-soːm-a] 'to read'
- [x-som-oːw-a] 'to be read'
- We would consider the possibility that such cases are underlyingly long vowels ('read' = /soːm/), and consider shortening rules (this turns out to be correct), as well as the possibility that these are underlyingly short vowels ('read' = /som/), and consider lengthening rules.
- Constructing underlying representations under a particular hypothesis
- We would consider the possibility that such cases are underlyingly long vowels ('read' = /soːm/), and consider shortening rules (this turns out to be correct), as well as the possibility that these are underlyingly short vowels ('read' = /som/), and consider lengthening rules.
Assuming that you have picked a particular direction for the rules (/A/=>[B], or /B/=>[A]) and are trying it out, the next step is to construct underlying representations. Here is a recommended procedure:
- Segments that do not alternate can (normally) be assumed to be phonemically identical in their underlying representationUnderlying representationIn some models of phonology as well as morphophonology, the underlying representation or underlying form of a word or morpheme is the abstract form the word or morpheme is postulated to have before any phonological rules have applied to it. If more rules apply to the same form, they can apply...
to their surface representation. (This presupposes, as already noted, that phonemic analysis is already accomplished, so any positional allophones will already appear in their underlying form.) - For segments that alternate, follow the hypothesis you made about underlying forms, implementing it consistently through the data. Thus if you are assuming that an alternation A ~ B found in a particular context, is underlain by A, you should set up /A/ in the underlying representationUnderlying representationIn some models of phonology as well as morphophonology, the underlying representation or underlying form of a word or morpheme is the abstract form the word or morpheme is postulated to have before any phonological rules have applied to it. If more rules apply to the same form, they can apply...
for all such alternations in that context. - Be sure that the underlying representationUnderlying representationIn some models of phonology as well as morphophonology, the underlying representation or underlying form of a word or morpheme is the abstract form the word or morpheme is postulated to have before any phonological rules have applied to it. If more rules apply to the same form, they can apply...
of each morphemeMorphemeIn linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
is uniform through its paradigm – this is a basic hypothesis of the theory you are assuming.
- In our example of [x-soːm-a] ~ [x-som-oːw-a], under the hypothesis that the rule is a shortening rule, these principles force us to set up the underlying representations /soːm/ for the root, and /-oːw/ for the invariantly long passive suffix.
- The final vowel /-a/ turns out to be a special case: its surface length is actually non-distinctive, being determined entirely by the phonological rules. Our grammar will work no matter what underlying length is assigned to this suffixSuffixIn linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
.- Working out the rules
- The final vowel /-a/ turns out to be a special case: its surface length is actually non-distinctive, being determined entirely by the phonological rules. Our grammar will work no matter what underlying length is assigned to this suffix
When you have a suitable set of hypothesized underlying forms, it is helpful to arrange them in a row, aligning their corresponding surface forms underneath them, as follows:
| 'to read' | 'to be read' | 'to stop for one' | |
| /x-soːm-a/ | /x-soːm-o:w-a/ | /ku-reːb-eɺ-an-a/ | underlying forms |
| ... | ... | ... | add rules here |
| [xsoːma] | [xsomoːwa] | [kurebeɺana] | surface forms |
It is then a matter of coming up with a single rule system that will derive the bottom row from the top. If you get stuck doing this, you can try collecting the local environments for the sounds that change, as described above for phonemic analysis.
- A clue for choosing underlying representations
When you are deciding whether to set up underlying A and derive B from it, or vice versa, there is often a clue in the data to guide you, namely, a contextually limited contrast. In the present case, note that while vowel length is phonemic in Chimwiini, only short vowels are allowed when more than three syllables from the end of a phrase
Phrase
In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....
, or when a long vowel follows. Such limitations are a strong clue that there must be a rule that wipes out the contrast in these environments.
Another way of saying the same thing is: don't analyze in a direction opposite to that of a neutralisation. When we analyze Chimwiini with shortening, or analysis fits in well with the contextually neutralised distribution of long and short vowels in the language. If, however, we try to analyse Chimwiini with lengthening, the phonological distribution will stymie us. The following quadruplet of forms should make this point clear.
[x-kuːl-a] 'to extract' [x-kul-oːw-a] 'to be extracted'
[x-kul-a] 'to grow' [x-kul-oːw-a] 'to be grown'
The top row of forms shows an alternation between [uː] and [u], which we earlier analyzed assuming underlying /uː/ and the neutralising rule of Pre-Long Shortening. It is plain that Pre-Long Shortening is neutralizing, since the passive form of [x-ku:l-a], [x-kul-oːw-a], is identical to the passive of [x-kul-a], meaning 'to grow'. If we had wrongly chosen underlying /u/ for the root meaning 'extract', we would be defeated: no matter what lengthening rule we tried, it would be unable to derive [x-kuːl-a] for 'extract' and [x-kul-a] for 'grow', since these two forms would have the same underlying representation
Underlying representation
In some models of phonology as well as morphophonology, the underlying representation or underlying form of a word or morpheme is the abstract form the word or morpheme is postulated to have before any phonological rules have applied to it. If more rules apply to the same form, they can apply...
.
The Isolation Form Shortcut and Why It Sometimes Fails
When one is looking for underlying forms, it is tempting to appeal to a "shortcut" that finds them with great speed:The Isolation Form Shortcut
- "The underlying form of a stem is simply the way that the stem appears in isolation (taking away the effects of any allophonic rules)."
This strategy particularly suggests itself for languages like English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, where stems frequently appear alone. Hearing an alternation like [ˈplænt] ~ [ˈplænɪŋ] (plant ~ planting; we are tempted to take the evidence of the isolation form [ˈplænt] as evidence sufficient in and of itself to justify the underlying form /ˈplænt/. This turns out to work fine for this particular case.
However, the Isolation Form Shortcut does not work in general. The reason for this lies in how the system is set up, and simple logic: it is certainly possible that neutralisation rules could apply just in case no affix is added to the stem. We would say that in such cases, the affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
"protects" the stem from the neutralizing rule, serving as a kind of buffer.
To make this more precise: neutralising phonological rules are often conditioned by word edge; that is, they have environments like /___]word. When an affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
is present, a stem will be buffered by the affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
, and the crucial rule won't apply. Indeed, the rule will apply in only those members of the paradigm where there is no affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
, so that the buffering effect is absent.
Phonologies that have this kind of phenomenon are quite common, occurring in Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, and many other languages.
Rule-Ordering Terminology
- Feeding
Observe that Apocope
Apocope
In phonology, apocope is the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, and especially the loss of an unstressed vowel.-Historical sound change:...
, when it exposes a consonant cluster at the end of a word, thereby makes it possible for Cluster reduction
Cluster reduction
In phonology and historical linguistics, cluster reduction is the simplification of consonant clusters in certain environments or over time.In some dialects of English such as AAVE certain historical consonant clusters reduce to single consonants at the ends of words: friend rhymes with Ben, and...
to apply. The following abbreviated derivation shows this:
| /jukaɾpa/ | underlying form |
| jukaɾp | Apocope |
| jukaɾ | Cluster Reduction |
| [jukaɾ] | surface form |
This is said to be a case of feeding: Apocope
Apocope
In phonology, apocope is the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, and especially the loss of an unstressed vowel.-Historical sound change:...
"feeds" Cluster reduction
Cluster reduction
In phonology and historical linguistics, cluster reduction is the simplification of consonant clusters in certain environments or over time.In some dialects of English such as AAVE certain historical consonant clusters reduce to single consonants at the ends of words: friend rhymes with Ben, and...
. The term is defined in general as follows:
Rule A feeds rule B when:
– A is ordered before B, and
– A creates novel configurations to which B may apply.
- Bleeding
Consider next the interaction of /w/ Epenthesis
Epenthesis
In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
and Vowel Deletion, shown in the following abbreviated derivation:
| /papi-uɻ/ | underlying form |
| papiwuɻ | /w/ Epenthesis |
| − | Vowel Deletion |
| [papiwuɻ] | surface form |
It is clear that if /w/ Epenthesis
Epenthesis
In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
had not applied, then Vowel Deletion would have had an additional chance to apply, creating *[papiɻ]. Thus, we might say that /w/ Epenthesis
Epenthesis
In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
, in this particular derivation, "blocks" or "pre-empts" Vowel Deletion. The standard term used, however, is bleeding; /w/ Epenthesis
Epenthesis
In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
bleeds Vowel Deletion. More generally:
Rule A bleeds rule B when:
– A is ordered before B, and
– A removes configurations to which B could otherwise have applied.
Orthographic context
The English plural morpheme s is written the same regardless of its pronunciation: cats, dogs. This is a morphophonemic spelling. If English used a purely phonemic orthography (the same system without any morphemic considerations), these could be spelled cats and dogz, because s and /z/ are separate phonemes in English.To some extent English orthography reflects the etymology
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
of its words, and as such it is partially morphophonemic. This explains not only cats /s/ and dogs /z/, but also science /saɪ/ vs. unconscious /ʃ/, prejudice /prɛ/ vs. prequel /priː/, chased /t/ vs. loaded /
Most morphophonemic orthographies, however, reflect only active morphology, like cats vs. dogs, or chased vs. loaded. Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
both have broadly phonemic writing systems, but while German is morphophonemic, transcribing the "underlying" phonemes, Turkish is purely phonemic, transcribing surface phonemes only (at least traditionally; this appears to be changing). For example, Turkish has two words, /et/ 'meat' and /et/ 'to do', which in isolation appear to be homonyms. However, when a vowel follows, the roots diverge: /eti/ 'his meat', but /edir/ 'he does'. In Turkish when a root that ends in a /d/ appears without a following vowel, the /d/ becomes /t/ (final obstruent devoicing
Final obstruent devoicing
Final obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as German, Dutch, Polish, and Russian, among others...
), and that is reflected in the spelling: et, et, eti, edir.
German has a similar relationship between /t/ and /d/. The words for 'bath' and 'advice' are /bat/ and /rat/, but the verbal forms are /badən/ 'to bathe' and /ratən/ 'to advise'. However, they are spelled Bad, baden and Rat, raten as if the consonants didn't change at all. Indeed, a speaker may perceive that the final consonant in Bad is different from the final consonant of Rat because the inflections differ, even though they are pronounced the same. A morphophonemic orthography such as this has the advantage of maintaining the orthographic shape of the root regardless of the inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
, which aids in recognition while reading.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
, pipes (| |) are often used to indicate a morphophonemic rather than phonemic representation. Another common convention is double slashes (// //), iconically implying that the transcription is 'more phonemic than simply phonemic'. Other conventions sometimes seen are double pipes (|| ||) and curly brackets ({ }).
- Table. The underlying (morpho-phonemic), phonemic, and phonetic representations of four German and Turkish words. (In the Turkish examples, //Ü// represents an underlying high vowel that, as a result of Turkish vowel harmonyVowel harmonyVowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
, may surface as any one of the four phonemes /i y ɯ u/.)word!!morpho-
phonemic!!phonemic!!phoneticGerman Bad //bad// /bat/ [bat] baden //badən// /badən/ [badən] Rat //rat// /rat/ [ʀat] raten //ratən// /ratən/ [ʀatən] Turkish et //ed// /et/ [ɛt] edir //edÜr// /edir/ [edir] et //et// /et/ [ɛt] eti //etÜ// /eti/ [eti]
Another example of a morphophonemic orthography is modern hangul
Hangul
Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
, and even more so the obsolete North Korean Chosŏn-ŏ sinch'ŏlchabŏp orthography.